The essays in this volume explore the phenomenon of foreign industrial recruitment in terms of the experience of six mid-American states--Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee--in attracting Japanese automobile assembly facilities. The contributors illumate the background to and the comparative setting for the mid-American competition for Japanese automobile plants in the era of international corporate flight, probe the dynamics of development in terms of six site-specific studies, and place these six state industrial recruitment experiences within the wider framework of federal-state relations.

State governments in the 1980s have pursued an aggressive strategy of public entrepreneurship focused on the recruitment of foreign capital and industry. These state economic development actions have been rooted in state fiscal health interests which have been made more pressing and perhaps more protracted by the momentous structural changes taking place in the international economic system and by the absence of a national economic program to meet the realities of the new international order.

The essays in this volume will explore this phenomenon of foreign industrial recruitment in terms of the experiences of six mid-American states--Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee--in attracting Japanese automobile assembly facilities. This experience and the choice of plant site in these states by Mazda, Honda, Fuji-Isuzu, Mitsubishi, Toyota, and Nissan was invariably determined by multistate negotiations and escalating state government incentive packages. To understand this phenomenon and its consequences, the essays in this volume will sketch its comparative historical, economic, and legal dimensions; examine the dynamics of Japanese automobile investment in terms of six site-specific studies; and then place these industrial recruitment experiences within a wider framework of federal-state relations and the prospects for a national industrial policy.

Part I illuminates the background to and comparative setting for the mid-